Faculty Development by Jackie Dwelle

Faculty development comes in many formats. Continuing education is certainly one of them! This morning Pebbles and I had the privilege of riding western with our colleague Carla Wennburg. For me it was a great experience for many reasons. First I am from England and never had the opportunity to ride western growing up, second as the dressage coach I have seen how riding western has helped my team riders and I wanted to experience it for myself and finally I love learning new things and finding out how they work. Of course as with anything new there is a learning curve from how to secure the cinch, to correct leading procedures to the fact that the horses are a lot shorter and you just mount from the ground. (Yes, I led little Holly, up to the giant TH mounting block causing much hilarity from my colleagues.)


So where did we start? With elementary control of course! Two hands, ask the horse to go to the bridle and then ask it to carry itself. (This is how I started with Holly with Carla saying, “just ride like you ride dressage.” Pebbles rode Harley with less contact.) Once I figured out not to hurry the jog (dressage makes you want to ride forward) then I was able to stop and steer very easily. Holly was very responsive to the voice when it came to stopping! Loping was the next thing and I had to really concentrate on being tall through my upper body. Canter to halt easy! We have to get better at those downward transitions in dressage. Carla showed us how to spin the horses and then had us finish up riding squares. It was fabulous!

So I had to try out some of this on the dressage horses and it was Jake’s turn today. We have been working on transitions within the gaits and he was amazing, going softly into the bridle and seeking contact which he has been a little tentative about lately. His canter was relaxed and adjustable and his halts improved as I remembered that when you train the voice is a VERY useful aid. It probably did not hurt that I rode with a more open hip angle and focused on using my outside aids to turn.

Looking forward to riding more western this summer - Thank you Carla!